


How Does Your Garden Grow?

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: As the Morning and the Night [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Brother-Sister Relationships, Bullying, Character Study, Depressing, Depression, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Gender Roles, Genderswap, POV Second Person, Period-Typical Sexism, Self-Destruction, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Siblings, Sister-Sister Relationship, Strained Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 11:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2023020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Pevensie and her family: a character study in three parts.  (Narnia genderswap AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Does Your Garden Grow?

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sure whether this story entirely works in terms of character development, nor whether I made any sense whatsoever when trying to talk about gender roles. But I am _so sick_ of fighting it, and it finally has some sort of ending, so I officially give up. If you have any editing advice whatsoever, I will... well. I will owe you a giant favor, okay?
> 
> The title, of course, is from the nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary."

**Faith:**

You don't remember a time when Stephen wasn't following you around. He's always been there -- one step sideways, one step back -- trusting you to lead the way. He's yours, as much a part of you as your name and your shadow.

You do everything together.

For a long time, this is perfect.

Then one summer day when Stephen is seven and you are eight, you catch Jonathan Darrow from down the street pushing Stephen up against a wall and calling him coward, calling him sister's pet, saying he's weak and stupid and _wrong_. Stephen just stands there and takes it.

You punch Darrow in the jaw, punch him in the stomach, kick him in the shins, kneel on his back when he falls down, and whisper in his ear, like the best kind of promise, that if he ever, _ever_ touches your little brother again, you'll make him wish he'd never been born. Then you move back and hold out your hand, offering to help him up -- no hard feelings, you've made your point.

He spits in your face.

You don't understand. It was just a fight. You know Darrow hit Lionel Haversham last month for talking about his own brother, and they're still friends. Why won't he treat you the same? What makes you different?

Stephen pulls you away before you start another fight.

"Why didn't you fight back?" you ask after Darrow limps off in sullen defeat.

"He didn't say anything that isn't true," Stephen says. "I don't like fighting. I do follow you around. I do let you protect me. What's the point of hitting him for telling the truth?"

"You're not a coward," you snarl. "You're _not_. There's nothing wrong about you. If anything's wrong, it's my fault. I'm the oldest. I'm supposed to protect you."

"I know," Stephen agrees, and then adds, softly, "but I think people don't expect girls to fight."

And people don't expect boys to let girls fight for them.

"Who cares what people think?" you say. "You should do what _you_ think is right. And there's nothing right about letting people like Darrow go around bullying everyone. If you don't stand up to him, who will?"

"You," Stephen says, and grins.

You smile back before you can stop yourself, because of course you won't let Darrow get away with anything. But that won't solve the real problem. If you're always the one who fights, that will only convince Darrow that he's right and Stephen is worthless.

It would be better for Stephen if he didn't follow you. Maybe if you weren't around, he'd get on better with the other boys and they wouldn't tease him for always looking to you first. Maybe he'd learn to stand up for himself.

You're going away to school next year. You think that might help.

It doesn't.

You never quite manage to make Stephen stop following you, either.

After a while, you only pretend to keep trying. And you hate yourself for being glad that you failed to keep him safe from you.

\---------------

**Hope:**

When Edith is born, a confusion of relatives and loud voices engulfs the house and you're shut up in the nursery for the whole day while Stephen pitches fits and drives himself to exhausted tears. Then Father comes into the room, picks a sleepy Stephen up in one arm, and reaches down to take your wrist in his other hand. "Come meet your new sister," he says, and leads you upstairs to where Mother lies propped in bed with a tiny, wrinkly, red-faced bundle in her arms.

You make a face.

Edith wakes up, her eyes still scrunched shut, and opens her toothless mouth into a perfect circle and wails like the house is falling down. In Father's arms, Stephen wakes and screams in protest.

"Send her back?" you ask Father, shouting over the noise.

He laughs and shakes his head. "You'll get used to her, Mary-my-girl," he says. "You'll be thick as thieves in a few years. Just wait."

You look back at the screaming baby and make another face, but sure enough, Father is right. Once Edith is big enough to walk, she follows you around just like Stephen does. It's different with Edith, though -- she's so tiny, so breakable, that you always want to swoop down and pick her up so no one can step on her by accident. You want to keep her perfect.

Edith doesn't want to be carried. Edith doesn't want you to protect her. Edith wants to be just like you, so she can protect herself and anyone else she lets into her heart. Edith thinks _you're_ perfect.

That kind of trust and love is terrifying. You deflect as best you can, tell her to look up to Mother instead, but secretly you try harder to be kind, to be smart, to be strong, so Edith will never look at you with disappointment.

Then you go away to school.

You've always been 'the odd girl,' but at home that didn't matter so much. People were used to you. Now you're among scores of strangers, all grasping desperately for ways to connect with each other, and nobody wants to seem out of place. Nobody wants to stand out; standing out is dangerous. Nobody wants to be anything but normal and inoffensive and rule-abiding.

Except the rules aren't fair, you can't keep your head down, and no matter how hard you try to fit in, you can't. You don't know why -- maybe you don't move right, or say the right things with the right inflections, or hold your face in the right expressions. At first it's not so bad. People simply ignore you, maybe whisper behind their hands as you walk past. But then you see two older girls tormenting a girl from your class -- taunting her, pushing her, stealing her glasses and snarling her hair -- and you drop your books and tell them to stop. When they laugh, you hit them. You _make_ them stop.

The girl from your class doesn't thank you. "Now they'll be even worse," she says, her face twisting in fear and anger, and she runs away before you can offer to stand at her back.

The older girls don't report you to the prefects or the teachers, but from then on, everyone calls you a freak. "Not a real girl," they say. "Just an animal," they say. "Worse than a savage," they say.

One day five girls corner you in the loo, strip you naked -- "Have to make sure you're not a boy trying to sneak in and spy on us, don't we?" -- and shove your clothes in the toilet. You walk back to your room trailing filthy water and eager, scandalized whispers. You won't run, but your face burns and something in your chest twists and aches and starts to hollow.

At Christmas, you go home and pretend nothing has changed. Mother and Father believe the lie. Stephen is willing to play along. Laurie never understood that you were odd to start with.

Edith looks at you sidelong and suspicious, and you know she can see through you. She can see that you're all wrong. She hates it. You can tell -- you see her wishing for something to change, wishing for you to be perfect, and steeling herself to face reality when you're as broken as always.

In a few years she'll come to your school. No one will see her for herself; they'll only see her as your sister. They'll call her a freak. Maybe you can survive being alone and hated, but you'd rather die than see Edith treated that way.

When you go back to school, you shove yourself down, study the other girls, and pretend to be just like them. You don't talk. You don't run. You don't fight. You don't do anything to stand out.

They see right through you anyway.

So does Edith. And Edith hates liars.

She stops looking up to you. It's for the best. The twisting, aching hollow in your chest grows and grows, but it's for the best.

She's better off without you. And unlike Stephen, Edith is smart enough to see the truth and keep her distance, whatever she may wish for.

\---------------

**Love:**

Laurie is your gift, the only one of your siblings you ask for, pray for, and wait for, counting down the days to when Mother and Father say he might be born. He's two weeks later than they expect and you wake up early every morning to slip into Mother and Father's room, just in case the baby came when you weren't looking.

Laurie is just as tiny as Edith was, but his face is smooth and round. When he wakes he doesn't scream, just lifts his little arms and curls his fingers around your thumb as if he already knows who you are and trusts you to keep him safe.

You promise never to let him down.

This is the only promise you come close to keeping, and it's Laurie's doing more than yours. He's too trusting to realize what you ought to be like. He's too forgiving to see how you hurt everyone around you.

He always believes in you.

You don't let him follow you like Stephen does. He follows Edith instead.

You don't let him use you as an example like Edith used to. He doesn't seem to need examples anyway.

You stop playing with him. You always play too rough, and that's not how a sister should be, no matter what Stephen thinks. Laurie doesn't argue. He just sneaks into your room at night and asks you to read him fairy tales, and somehow you end up letting him curl against your side while you tell him lies about happily ever after.

You stop looking after him. You've never been good with clothes and treats, and Edith does all that so much better than you ever could. Laurie doesn't seem hurt. He just stands beside you when you're trying to study and asks how to tell right from wrong, why bad things happen to good people, if God loves him even though he flushed his Brussels sprouts down the toilet and lied to Mother about it. You don't know why he thinks you have answers, but you do your best not to disillusion him.

You leave him behind, over and over -- trapped at school, locked in your room to hide from the world, running off to pound your pain and frustration away in mindless speed and pointless fights. Laurie is always waiting when you come home, a smile on his face and his arms raised to give you a hug. You never quite manage to stop yourself from picking him up, at least for a moment, no matter how much you tell yourself it's better to disappoint him now than for him to build you up in his mind and have that image come crashing down later.

Sometimes Laurie has nightmares. He and Edith share a room, but she won't comfort him. She won't pet his hair and tell him everything will get better. Instead, she stalks down the hall, picks the lock on your door, and shakes you out of restless dreams. "Pretend for him," she says, before she vanishes downstairs to heat a cup of milk.

You sit on Edith's bed with Laurie in your arms and sing -- lullabies, Christmas carols, silly schoolyard games, every tune you know. He quiets and leans his head against your shoulder. "Love you," he whispers.

Edith kicks her foot against the doorframe and glares until you set Laurie back on his own bed. She hands him the cup of milk and helps him drink; you stand just out of sight and watch through the crack between the door and the wall. When she starts to tuck him in, you sneak away.

Laurie only turns to you because Edith makes him. He doesn't really need you at all.

You tell this to Stephen one day. His face goes blank, then twists halfway between laughter and pity. "None of us _need_ you, Mary. You made sure of that. But that doesn't mean we don't miss you."

Nobody should miss you. Nobody should care enough for that. You're not worth it.

But Stephen believes in you; he wouldn't keep following if he didn't. Edith yearns for you; she wouldn't hate you for disappointing her if she didn't expect better. And Laurie loves you.

That hurts most of all.

You wrap your baby brother in your arms and wish you could find a hole in the world to fall through, a way to disappear so thoroughly no one would ever remember that you were born. You wish you knew how to stop hurting your family. You wish you knew how to be numb. You pray for everything to be right again, the way it was when you were too young to know better.

No one answers.

Laurie nestles his head on your shoulder in perfect trust.

For his sake, you can find a way to push onward. You can shoulder Stephen's worry and Edith's anger as long as Laurie can see some tiny speck of good in you. You can keep pretending.

"And they all lived happily ever after," you whisper to him.

Maybe one day you'll make that true.

Until then, you keep running.

**Author's Note:**

> [Some further thoughts](http://edenfalling.livejournal.com/533173.html?thread=1931957#t1931957).


End file.
